Putting yourself first

Photo credit: spaceodissey/ Flickr Creative Commons

I think in our culture, we often believe that putting ourselves first is selfish, egotistical, wrong. This in spite of a lot of big talk about "looking out for number one." (Talk which is usually problematic in other ways, but I don't want to go there right now.) We give so little respect and value to our own needs, our own lives. We put the needs of our loved ones before our own, and we put the needs of our jobs: the needs of our superiors, our subordinates, our peers and our clients before our own. Maybe we realize that this is not working, and we try to put aside a portion of each day for self-care, or we try to assert our right to say no.

I've been thinking about this a lot because I've been on a journey, the last two years, of learning to say yes to myself. Like so many things, it's a little easier said than done. The how and when to put your own needs first is difficult. It's not that you want to ignore the needs of others. It's just that you need to be well and balanced yourself in order to truly give and support the others around you. Too few of us in this culture are well and balanced these days, in my opinion. I know this because when I meet someone who is, that person stands out.

I wanted to pass on a teaching from one of my teachers, Susan Marcus. (Susan has so much wisdom to share, and I'm excited to see her own studio, Studio Peace, coming into being. Check it out.) Last week in class, it seemed like everyone was hurting in one way or another. Susan took the opportunity to talk about how injury reminds us that we need to respect and care for our bodies. Then she said, "I often think that if everyone took care of themselves the way women do when they're pregnant, how much healthier we'd all be. Just think about what would happen if we all took as much responsibility for our own lives in our bodies as we do when we have another life within us."

I'm at the age where a large percentage of my friends are either pregnant or have just had a baby, so I've seen it happen. Women get pregnant, and they stop drinking so much coffee. They stop drinking alcohol and/or smoking. They start eating their fruits and vegetables, they take their supplements, and they start drinking enough water. They work less overtime and they're dedicated to making time for their yoga class.

Why are we willing to make profound life changes to protect the life of our child, but we are not willing to make the same changes to protect the body - the one and only body - we were given in this life? Why are we not willing to make those same changes for ourselves, when they improve our happiness and our sense of well-being? I'm saying "we" here because I'm just as guilty as the next person. Stop drinking coffee?

So I've been playing with this idea a little bit. There's this spark of divinity in this body. This body is all it has. How can I care for it? It makes it a little easier not to make excuses, a little easier to step onto my mat every day and eat my veggies and drink water and meditate. The life within me. The light within me. Ahimsa applies to me, too.

Reflections of our true nature

Photo credit: Bryan Ray (black_listed/ Flickr Creative Commons)

"While we practice conscious breathing, our thinking will slow down, and we can give ourselves a real rest. Most of the time, we think too much, and mindful breathing helps us to be calm, relaxed and peaceful. It helps us stop thinking so much and stop being possessed by sorrows of the past and worries about the future. It enables us to be in touch with life, which is wonderful in the present moment."
- "Peace is Every Step" by Thich Nhat Hanh

As I mentioned in a post last month, I've been following Tricycle Magazine's Commit to Sit challenge for the past 27 days. As it draws to a close, I've been reflecting on the experience. I did my full-day meditation challenge yesterday and am finishing the experience with two days of the regular Week 4 program. The full day of meditation was... well, challenging for me. I've never meditated for longer than an hour at a time before. The experience ranged from pain, frustration and self-hatred to bliss, gratitude and insight. Towards the end of the second two-hour block, I rose to do walking meditation and I felt like I was gliding through each step in pure awareness.

In that moment, I had a new understanding of the ethical components of yogic and Buddhist practice. During the Commit to Sit program, I committed to the Five Precepts as best I could. These practices were familiar to me as they share a lot in common with the five yamas of yoga. I've always struggled to follow the yamas, feeling some of them were almost unattainable. The yamas are often translated as "restraints" or "abstinences" or even commandments or "thou shalt nots" (ugh!). I recently encountered an alternate translation in Nischala Joy Devi's The Secret Power of Yoga book, which is subtitled A woman's guide to the heart and spirit of the Yoga Sutras. Whether or not you agree that a heart-centered perspective is a purely feminine construct, it is interesting to read this refreshing and positive take on Patanjali's Yoga Sutras text.

Many traditional translations of this part of the sutras (II29-39) think about the yamas as restrictions to our behavior towards others (ahimsa = non-violence or non-harming; satya = truthfulness; asteya = non-stealing; brahmacharya = well, we can't agree on a translation for this one because we're afraid it might mean no sex! but commonly continence, sense-control, celibacy, or the like; aparigraha = non-hoarding, non-stealing, non-greed). Nischala Devi has a different take (p.p. 168-169):

"Often, to simplify the enormous breadth and depth of the Yamas and Niyamas, they are called the "Do's and Don'ts of Yoga" [sic] or sometimes the "Ten Commandments of Yoga." This is taking a highly refined and virtuous way of living expressed throughout the millennia and reducing it to a finger-shaking image... When observed on a subtler level, the Yamas and Niyamas seem to be more of a tribute to being, affirming our already Divine nature..."

"Knowing the importance of repeating a statement in the affirmative, I have chosen to translate (as much as I possibly could) using positive, life-affirming language... When words or phrases evoke fear, punishment, or denial of pleasure, they encroach on our spiritual practices and diminish rather than enhance the glory of our true nature."

 Her translation of the yamas (reflections of our true nature) is:

1. Ahimsa: reverence, love, compassion for all
2. Satya: truthfulness, integrity
3. Astheya: generosity, honesty
4. Brahmacharya: balance and moderation of the vital life force
5. Aparigraha: awareness of abundance, fulfillment.

Doesn't that feel different?

Anyway, whatever translation you use, it seems clear enough that it's desirable to achieve compassion and reverence for all life, integrity, generosity, and a sense of fulfillment. But then you're going about your day and you yell at the driver in front of you, and then you gossip about someone at work, and then you decide not to share part of your lunch with a coworker who doesn't have any because you want it all for yourself.

So, how in the world do you achieve this stuff? What occurred to me yesterday in meditation is maybe you just slow down. We go through our lives so fast, we can barely see them happening to us, just like we walk so fast, we can't feel how our body is moving through the steps. Maybe you just slow down enough that you can see and feel what is happening. In that walking meditation yesterday, I felt that, at my core, I was calm and peaceful. Each step was smooth and steady and careful. From that place, I think the yamas would arise naturally and with ease. "Reflections of our true nature."

I know that this isn't a new concept, but experiencing it the way I did was new to me. Of course, slowing down that much is easier said than done. But it's a start. It's a piece of the puzzle, something concrete to move towards. It sounds easier than just love everyone and everything. I'll give it a try.

Accepting limitations

“Through practice, I’ve come to see that the deepest source of my misery is not wanting things to be the way they are. Not wanting myself to be the way I am. Not wanting the world to be the way it is. Not wanting others to be the way they are. Whenever I’m suffering, I find this ‘war with reality’ to be at the heart of the problem.” -- Stephen Cope

“These days, my practice is teaching me to embrace imperfection: to have compassion for all the ways things haven’t turned out as I planned, in my body and in my life – for the ways things keep falling apart, and failing, and breaking down. It’s less about fixing things, and more about learning to be present for exactly what is.” --Anne Cushman

Once again, I've been gone from this blog for a while. I've been practicing out in the world. I've been writing, but not about yoga. I've been going down different avenues, most of them very internal. Once again, I feel like it's time to come back here and see what there is to be said, explicitly, about practice.

Since the New Year, I've been practicing meditation and pranayama more intensely. I've been reading a lot about yoga philosophy and mindfulness in daily life, and my asana practice has dropped to the side. I've also started training for a marathon. As I've been increasing my weekly mileage, I've been exploring the meditative possibilities of running - how it feels to connect with the body and the breath, to use yogic practices like sending the breath into areas of discomfort and using mindfulness with mental habits such as fear of failure and the desire to give up.

Approximately three weeks ago, I started getting some minor nagging knee pain during runs. It was so negligible that I put it out of my mind and thought I just needed to stretch more and rest my legs. However, on February 22 I completed a 10-mile run and I ended it with severe pain in my knees which worsened over the course of the afternoon and evening. I soon realized that I had a serious overuse injury that was going to require an absolute halt to training until I could move pain free.

I was devastated. I had invested all my identity in my running and had come to rely on it for a sense of purpose and power in my life. At first, I wanted to give up on everything and crawl into bed and never come out. But then all the meditation practice I've been doing kicked in. Instead, I was determined to listen to my body until it spoke to me. I gathered as much information as I could about my condition, and I asked my knees what they needed. At first, they just wanted me to stop moving, but then as the pain subsided, I began to be able to identify specific areas of difficulty and how they were affected by the way I moved my body.

I held back. I watched all my thoughts and practiced letting them go, whatever came up: a sense of failure, a sense of desperation, a competitive urge. When my knees asked for it, I got on my yoga mat and discovered that my body knew which areas to work and stretch to give my knees the freedom of movement they required. Yesterday, I woke up and my body shouted, "RUN ME!" At first, I doubted it, but when I took to the road, I discovered that I could run 4 miles without pain. Not only that, but I was present in every step. I felt the impact of each movement; I felt the chain of energy of each impact with the road.

As soon as we are formed, our body begins to be affected by being in the world. Like the tree trunk in the picture accompanying this post, we are worn by the business of living and by our contact with those living around us. We are not perfect, we are not invincible, we cannot do whatever we want. We cannot take on everything. We like to think we can, but our bodies let us know... and if we don't listen, they shout louder. If we fight it, if we ignore our bodies, we end up in pain. What I have learned these past two weeks is that the pain is not here to punish us. The pain is our teacher. It is here to remind us to listen and to find what it is that we need. Come back into your body. Ask it what it has to tell you today. And then listen. Whether you like what it has to say or not.

Bus meditations

I stubbornly continue to ride public transportation rather than buying a car. I am repeatedly told that it is not possible to survive in Southern California without a car. What people mean when they say this is: It's not easy to live in Southern California without a car. We are so used to hyperbole in our culture, so used to hearing anything that requires the slightest effort or patience referred to as impossible, we have begun to believe it.

It is ABSOLUTELY possibly to live in San Diego without a car. That's not to say it's easy, but I believe that we can only change the world through our own actions. We cannot be responsible for the actions of others, but by acting with integrity ourselves, we can inspire others to follow suit, we can create movements of many individuals acting with integrity. Peace is possible only through enough individuals acting peacefully. We cannot change someone into a peaceful person, we can only change ourselves. The April page of my 2009 Thich Nhat Hanh calendar bears this quote:

My actions are the ground on which I stand.

So I choose not to eat meat most of the time because I do not wish to support financially to the evils of the American meat industry, and I choose not to own a car largely because I see many benefits to choosing public transportation including:

• Reduced cost to me
• Reduced cost to the environment
• Reduced traffic
• More exercise (I walk a lot)
• Controlled consumption (I think twice before going to the store and I only buy what I can carry)
• Opportunities to engage with the realities of my community, to practice yoga on a daily basis out in the world

To be completely honest, there are other factors which speak less to my good moral character such as the fact that I am totally intimidated by the whole car shopping experience.

Call me crazy, but I am getting along fine without a car. Given, the public transportation system in San Diego is appalling and getting worse, carrying on a fine California tradition of overreliance on private motor vehicles. However, if everyone keeps driving cars rather than riding transit, there will be no motivation to change the system - so I have persisted over nearly five years. It does limit where I can live and where I can shop, but not necessarily in a bad way. There are a few things that I regret not being able to do, but every few months I rent a car and take care of a lot of these chores. I rely on friends for rides and sometimes I feel guilty about that.

Anyway, I wanted to address my last point in the above list (opportunities to engage with the realities of my community, to practice yoga on a daily basis out in the world) because I think it's an aspect of riding public transportation which is not usually discussed. A friend recently reminded me about the red light meditation, which got me thinking about bus meditations. For example:

• The waiting for the bus meditation - see the red light meditation (link above). Unlike the red light meditation, though, the waiting for the bus meditation is tricky because it can go on for a pretty long time and you never know when the bus is going to arrive. By nature, monkey mind wants to go back to thoughts of When is the bus coming? Where is the bus? Why is it late? I'm so hot/ cold/ tired/ bored. My feet hurt. etc. What a gift, to have a built-in exercise of bringing yourself back to the body, the breath, the present moment. (By the way, when will the bus come? When you are ready for it!) I also like to do tadasana and pranayama at the bus stop.

  
  

• Slowing down - In our world, we are always going, going, going nowhere fast. What a gift, to have pauses built into your day! When you are waiting for a bus, there is nothing to do that will make the bus come faster. There is nothing to do but exist at the bus stop. When you are on the bus, there is nothing you can do to arrive at your destination faster. (By the way, there is really nothing you can do when you're driving either - but people usually try and it's usually dangerous!) So you can experience complete freedom to allow things to unfold as they must and there is this amazing opportunity to just sit, open the heart, slow the mind, focus on the breath. You also have an opportunity to just experience how you are feeling going into your day, or in the evening, how your day has affected you. So often we don't give ourselves a chance to connect.

  
  

• Loving kindness meditation and/or compassion - On public transportation, you are in the midst of humanity. You see a lot of suffering. People cry on the bus - I have cried on the bus. People laugh, people sleep, people stare blankly out the window. People hobble in physical pain, they are destitute, they are ill, they are drunk or high. People suffer from mental illness, and people are angry, with or without good reason. People criticize strangers. People are selfish and they are generous. People express sympathy, they reach out to help others for no particular reason other than that it is right. Sometimes, particularly if one is fortunate, there is a tendancy to isolate oneself from those who are less fortunate, from how things are in the world. (Is this, in fact, the reason why many people are so glued to their cars? Avoidance?) On the bus, you see it all. Sometimes, it is all I can do to open my heart to it all and keep breathing. What better place to experience the same-ness of all people, to practice loving the world?

Leave the car at home. What practices do you come up with? Ride the bus. Open your heart.

Compassion starts with yourself

If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete.
-- Jack Kornfield

Sometimes I write things here just to remind myself of what I know but have forgotten. Practicing loving kindness towards myself is a big one. I'm quite sure that babies don't lie there and say to themselves, "Oh no, I wet my pants again. I am a horrible person!" So when does all this negative self-talk start, and where does it come from?

Yesterday I taught a teacher training workshop on classroom management. If you talk to teachers about their problem students and the issues that come up in their classrooms again and again, the emotions that come up can be powerful. As a teacher, student after student, year after year, is pushing your buttons. That one cell phone user is carrying the baggage of all previous in-class cell phone users. No wonder it is a high burnout profession! We all need therapy.

I guess any job is the same though. As a manager, I catch myself reacting inappropriately and all out of proportion because of that proverbial last straw. Because over the years, I've heard the same thing again and again so many times that I've lost my ability to see it for what it is. The student standing in front of me has no idea that he is the 300th student to wait until after the deadline to ask to change classes, but I react as though this particular student has done this 300 times. And then, I beat myself up for it. I'm angry at this student, therefore I'm a horrible person. Thus begins the self-flagellation.

In the workshop, we discussed the myth that teachers are not human. Sometimes we complain about the lack of empathy others show towards us. Students often seem oblivious to the fact that we might have our own concerns. We might be sick or heartbroken, we might be waiting for the results of serious medical tests or have a family member who has just passed away. We may suffer from insomnia or have debts we can't pay. But if we don't deliver impeccable service at every moment, we become a Bad Teacher.

It's easy to blame the student for this state of affairs, but the fact of the matter is that things are rarely one person's fault. I think that we - teachers, managers, professionals - often perpetuate the myth that we are not human. We present the hardened, professional, infallible front. We hide our weakness, afraid to be culled from the herd and put out of our misery. Because of this, we might think we are the only ones having this particular problem. We might start to think that we are less than human!

The practice of yoga is very forgiving. We all suffer and we all contribute to the suffering of others - we are not perfect! However, we have a choice, something that can be learned: we can have compassion for the imperfections of ourselves and others. I'm not saying this is easy. There's a reason why it's called practice. Sometimes, when I am gentle with myself and open my heart to my own suffering, I learn that situations are not as bad as I imagined them to be!

I encouraged the teachers to try a practice that I myself have been working on. Whenever tension arises, stop and ask yourself why. Why does this student make me so angry? What are my issues surrounding this situation? And then Why is the student acting the way he is? What is really going on? Marshall Rosenberg's system of Non-Violent Communication has a lot to say about how this kind of thinking, considering universal needs and how they contribute to emotions, can remove tension and build peace.

When I remember this practice (which is only some of the time), I find that the tension in the situation usually goes away. At best, there are these moments of insight and connection that take the breath away. At worst, the problem simply becomes a non-issue. Either way, everybody wins. I don't think this practice is possible unless we can learn to see ourselves kindly and with great compassion. When I can fully experience my own suffering with tenderness, I am filled with compassion for all other beings who are also suffering.

To quote Saul David Raye's opening words in a workshop I took with him at the Ojai Yoga Crib in 2007:

It is not easy being a divine soul in a body on Planet Earth in the year 2007.

Have compassion for yourself. It is difficult exisiting the way we do. Open your heart, see yourself and let yourself be seen.

Namaste, friends. The divine in me sees the divine in you.

Gateway to Compassion

I had an interesting article in my inbox this morning. Its theme is related, I think, to some issues I have written about here before. To loosely paraphrase, it talks about valuing and fully experiencing your own feelings as a gateway to compassion. I think this is a nice counterpart to the question of aparigraha, letting go. Paradoxically, it is sometimes harder to let our feelings go because we repress them and refuse to fully experience them, or because we belittle them and somehow do not think we have the right to feel so strongly about what may seem to be relatively minor issues. However, many yogis have found - and this holds true in my experience as well - that by fully experiencing a negative emotion without repression or judgment, that emotion then lessens and becomes more bearable. In addition, remaining open and compassionate to ourselves and our own pain, allows us to approach the world with a heart that is open and loving in the face of suffering. The Buddha said, "Life is suffering," but he also offered an alternative. And the beautiful thing about suffering is that it is universal, it is what brings all beings together in mutual understanding.

This is kind of an accidental blog entry for me! I hope it gives you something to think about.

Namaste.

Elections

Tomorrow is Election Day! This is an excellent opportunity to practice. I plan to be at my local polling place before 7 a.m. Normally, I believe that one's vote is a private matter and not to be discussed. However, I am happy to publicly cast my vote tomorrow for Barack Obama, a Presidential Candidate who seems to embody many of the principles of yoga. From reading Barack's writing, I sense a striving to cause as little harm as possible through his actions (ahimsa) and to speak and act truthfully (satya), as well as a desire to really serve others. If he is even half as good as he seems, the whole world would be better off with him as President.

Here in California, there are a number of key measures on the ballot which relate to some basic human and animal rights. I am looking forward to voting to give all beings a better chance at freedom! (A small ironic aside - when I was looking for a succinct and beautiful description of ahimsa to link to above, I got to a dictionary site on which the advertisement banner said "Yes on Prop 8" - the California Proposition which would ban gay marriage. On the ahimsa page - really?! I'm sure it was just a random coincidence - the universe is often quite amusing! I did not find a satisfying article, so look for more information on ahimsa and satya in later posts.)

Whether or not you agree with my points of view, if you are a registered voter in the US (or any country) I urge you to vote. It is important to take action and speak clearly on these crucial issues that are on the table in this, and in any election. We can only be responsible for our own actions, but if each of us acts responsible, we have the power to change everything. Please go out and vote to the best of your ability from a place of peace, good-will and clarity.

Although I feel it is very important to vote with conviction, I am trying very hard to practice aparigraha - non-grasping or letting go - this election season. There will be more about this concept in a later post. (It is a pretty intense practice!!!) If tomorrow's results are not as I hope, I will need to let go of my expectation and continue to exist peacefully in the new reality. Once again, I can only be responsible for my own actions and reactions. It is hard to practice compassion for people whose actions and beliefs seem to cause widespread pain and suffering. And yet we are all beings doing our very best to live on this earth in the way we think is right. Every one of us suffers, and harms others from that place of suffering.

I am off to yoga class tonight, where I will dedicate my practice to John McCain, Sarah Palin, and those who will vote against me tomorrow. :-) Oh yeah, and George W. I've been trying to practice compassion for him for years. It's pretty deep and powerful stuff!

lokah samastah sukhino bhavantu ~ may all beings in all worlds be happy and free

om shanti ~ peace to all ~ goodnight